2.1 Commencement Speech at Mount Holyoke College

Perfection is a stressful word. There are people in our world who believe they have to live up to the standard of perfection placed in front of them by other people in their life when it really does not matter. The writer expresses this in her commencement speech. The main idea behind her speech is that nobody is perfect. The writer was constantly caught up in trying to be perfect however she soon found out that that was not possible. She begins talking about her past and how she was used to constantly being perfect. Using an analogy, she compares the burden of trying to be perfect to a backpack full of bricks. The constant thoughts of trying to be perfect and trying to please everyone around soon became too much for her to handle. There was no way she could do it, and for the first time she was realizing this. She wants to put the burden down and take off her backpack.

            The writer asks her readers if they feel any similarly with how she felt in the pressure of trying to achieve perfection, and beings to write about different ways of doing that. But the question here is, is being a perfectionist that bad?

            No, it’s not, but there is a fine line.  As humans we are all in search for the same thing: happiness in life. This happiness looks different for each person but in some form or another we want to be happy with the aspects of our life. Searching for this happiness is not wrong though. It has to be about you.

            To align the writer’s thoughts and my own, your focus has to be yourself and what you truly need. Most choices you make should be a reflection of what you want or what will better yourself.  The writer tells the reader to think back to first grade, when you could hear your own thoughts. That truly is the best time of your life, and unfortunately as first graders we are very unaware of that. The best thing you can do for yourself is to forget finding perfection and embrace yourself. Granted this is much easier said that actually achieved. But the key to it is looking at perfection and happiness. Compare them to another and decide if torturing yourself for years and years to come to try to achieve something inevitable unobtainable is worth more than experiencing your life with enjoyment and embracing what you do have and what you can actually achieve.

            Being a perfectionist is stressful, and eventually it will only lead to unhappiness because of the mentality you accumulate with the search for perfection. This mentality of “it is never enough” will eventually destroy you and how you perceive yourself. It is also dangerous because never being able to accept one thing about you will lead to the disappointment of things about yourself that are already wonderful how they are. The best thing you can do is what the writer says; lay down the burden labeled perfection.